>You can then add a fake search engine on localhost that will always fail, and set this to be the only enabled search engine.
YES! My friend, you have found my holy grail, thank you
I achieved this by turning off a handful of config options for the address bar's suggestions; setting the search input to be separate from the address bar, and hiding it via Customize Toolbar.
I think these were the most important:
keyword.enabled
browser.fixup.alternate.enabled
browser.urlbar.suggest.searchesFor many versions now, removing the separate search bar via Customize Toolbar reverts to combined URL bar and search bar. It also leaves the search option in the right-click menu.
That may be the case, but typing into my address bar does not trigger or suggest searches. Good point about the right click.
Oooh! That explains why I haven't been able to disable that stuff from the omnibar. I hate the omnibar -- I just want text entered there to be interpreted as a URL and nothing else -- but at some point, I wasn't able to configure it to be that anymore.
If this is why, you've just made Firefox better for me! Thank you!
There are a bunch of about:config changes you can make to prevent searching from the address bar. I follow that up by going through and just deleting nearly every string with a URL in it.
Re:Firefox search update
by elaborate4013 on Tuesday May 14, 2024 @03:13PM
(#40358972)
Are you talking about the address bar search? Just disable keywords in about:config then.
It's surprisingly difficult to disable searching from the browser UI in Firefox. Firefox insists you have at least one search engine enabled at all times. The best option I know of is to set the undocumented setting "browser.urlbar.update2.engineAliasRefresh" to "true" in about:config, which enables an "Add" button in the Search preferences for adding custom search engines. You can then add a fake search engine on localhost that will always fail, and set this to be the only enabled search engine.